by Ash Davidson
“There are studies,” Daniel said.
“Like on rats and stuff?”
Daniel nodded.
“I fucking knew it,” Keith said. “Something like that—” He shook his head. Melody wiped her eyes. “It don’t just happen for no reason.”
The blond woman scribbled, pencil scratching at her pad.
“We were just talking about the sprays,” Daniel said, catching Colleen up. “There’s a community up in Oregon trying to get an injunction against some of the same herbicides they’re spraying around here—2,4,5-T in particular—until there’s better science. And the EPA is studying it—mother’s milk, beef fat. In the meantime, we’re asking for a voluntary moratorium.”
All the eyes in the room turned to her. A clipboard sat on the burl table with a few scrawled signatures.
Robley asked another question. Colleen felt a tug on the thread that tied her to Chub, alone in the cold truck. She slipped out while Daniel was talking, pulling the door quietly shut behind her.
“Heard enough?” Carl asked, wreathed by a cloud of cigarette smoke.
“Tell Helen I said good night.”
Carl nodded and took a long drag, orange dot in the dark.
The truck windows were fogged with Chub’s warm breath.
“Colleen!” Daniel called, coming through the gate after her. “You should stay. You’re not alone in this. Cynthia…” She could tell by his hesitation that Cynthia was the woman with the notepad. “She’s a journalist. She’d like to talk to you. You know better than anybody what people have been going through around here.”
“I can’t.”
Daniel looked down at his hands. “You can’t? Or you won’t?”
“Joanna had a calf that died,” she said quietly. “At my mom’s old place.”
“Recently?” he asked.
“Not too long ago.”
He reached reflexively for the pencil above his ear, gave a quick nod, and stepped aside to let her go.
She climbed into the truck and started the motor. Chub stirred in the backseat.
“Are we home?” he asked.
“Almost, Grahamcracker.”
* * *
“In here,” Rich called from the kitchen.
Noodles roiled on the stove, meatballs sizzling on the back burner. She and Chub had eaten so many Cracker Jacks she’d forgotten about dinner.
“Almost ready.” Rich didn’t ask where she’d been, why they were so late. He was wearing her apron, which made Chub giggle. She pulled Chub back against her legs as Rich lifted the pot and poured it into the sink, steam fogging the window. He rinsed the colander of pasta, letting her notice.
Rich didn’t put stock in sorrys. His apologies were all in the things he did: in the hose running from the faucet to the filter’s cylinder, in the jet of cold water shooting from its spout.
December 17 RICH
He’d spent all day up 24-7 Ridge, clearing alder. Scout’s collar jingled up ahead, creeks louder now that it was dark. Rain sluiced down his slicker, white clouds of breath eddying in the beam of his headlamp. Finally, he crested Bald Hill, kitchen window glowing gold. He hooked Scout onto his chain, mussed his wet hackles, and knocked his boots against the back stoop, bringing the McCulloch in with him. She’d rust to hell if he didn’t dry her off.
“I’ll clean this up,” he said, tracking over to the table and pulling out a chair.
Colleen looked up from the spread-out newspaper. He shucked off his gloves and pulled a foot free, wet sock coming with it. Colleen pushed the paper across.
“These things weigh ten pounds,” he said, working the laces on the second boot.
He missed his caulks. Needed to drive up and get them. His fingertips itched, coming back to life. He held the paper at arm’s length until the print sharpened. Baby on her hip, braid, long skirt, she looked from another time, holding up a freezer bag of furry lumps.
Joanna Roesch, 23, mother of three, with deformed chicks hatched at her farm off Deer Rib Road. Roesch believes herbicides aerially sprayed on nearby logging concessions are to blame.
“What a crock,” Rich said. “Mad River Union—communist bullshit paper.”
“Read it,” Colleen said, putting away dishes.
He cleared his throat and read aloud.
“When Joanna Roesch first noticed a milky substance clouding the spring that supplied her family’s gravity-fed water line, she didn’t think much of it.
“ ‘It cleared up after a few days,’ Roesch said. ‘But the kids got nosebleeds, after they sprayed. They bled and bled, sometimes for an hour.’
“Soon Roesch noticed other change too. Chicks that hatched in the weeks following aerial spraying on a ridge east of her farm had crossed beaks, deformed wings, and clubbed feet. The family’s dairy cow gave birth to a paralyzed calf that later died. Roesch says she only began associating the birth defects with the sprays after water samples from a nearby creek showed high concentrations of the herbicides 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, the two ingredients in the chemical defoliant Agent Orange.
“ ‘I didn’t think about them hurting things that weren’t even born,’ said Roesch, who is six months pregnant with her fourth child.”
Colleen bit a hangnail. Rich skipped ahead.
“ ‘People don’t worry about what they can’t see,’ said Daniel Bywater, a fisheries biologist studying the impact of herbicide spraying and other logging practices on local salmon runs. Bywater, an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe, believes the herbicides could also affect humans. The county has opened an investigation after it recorded three live births of anencephalic babies (born with sacs of fluid in place of brains) in the last year. Nationwide, the rare birth defect affects fewer than one in 2,500 babies. Health officials have also documented an increase in fetal deaths, though the total number of miscarriages in the county is unknown, since many women do not seek medical attention, and stillbirths are not always recorded, especially in rural and tribal communities where childbirth often takes place at home.
“ ‘There are women in this community, women in good health, having two, three, four miscarriages,’ Bywater said. ‘You have to wonder, why is this happening here?’
“Roesch and her children still eat the eggs her chickens lay. Deer Rib Ridge, which overlooks the family’s property, is scheduled to be treated with 2,4,5-T again in March. A concerned citizens group is circulating a petition asking logging giant Sanderson Timber, the county, and the Forest Service to temporarily suspend all aerial spraying of the chemicals.
“Helen and Carl Yancy—”
Colleen clanked a plate against a cabinet door. Rich paused.
“—of Klamath Glen lost their second child in November, shortly after Mrs. Yancy, also an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe, delivered the baby, the most recent case of anencephaly.
“ ‘They say it doesn’t hurt nothing, we could shower in the stuff. We get it all over us when we spray,’ said Mr. Yancy, who drives a tanker truck for Sanderson Timber, spraying herbicides to keep logging roads clear of brush. ‘I don’t know. If they told me they’d invented a safe kind of bullet, I still wouldn’t let them shoot my kid in the head.’
“Stupid.” Rich pushed back from the table, grabbing his boots. Talking to the paper—Merle wouldn’t just let a thing like that slide.
“Do you think I should go check on Joanna?” Colleen asked. “She might not have seen it yet.”
She held on to that woman, as if, just by living in the old cabin, she had become a relative.
“Stay the hell out of it is what we should do.”
“Why are you so upset?” Colleen asked.
“I’m not upset!” Rich sighed. “If we get wrapped up in this, even if Merle thought we were being a little friendly to that woman—he’d yank those roads out from under me so fast my head would spin.”
“What happened to your forehead?” Colleen asked, noticing the cut.
“Nothing.” He pawed at it. “Let’s just stay ou
t of it.”
Colleen pursed her lips, wiped her hands on a dish towel, drying each finger individually, like she was cleaning the command off them.
“There’s a notice in there,” she said, lifting her chin at the paper. “February twenty-seventh. The public hearing for those Damnation Grove harvest plans.”
“I’m going to get cleaned up,” he said.
His wet clothes slapped the bathroom floor. In the mirror, he saw the gash, the width of his pinkie, guttering the middle line of his forehead. The hot water of the shower stung, running down his face, draining the anger. He dressed, came back down the hall, forks scraping plates.
“Chub was hungry.” She avoided his eyes, disagreement still hanging in the air.
He harpooned a baked potato, ladled meat juice over the roast.
“Rolls are in the oven,” she said after he sat.
He forked up a mouthful.
“They said Luke couldn’t sit with them,” Chub continued.
“And what did you say?” she asked, making no effort to catch Rich up.
“I said he could sit with me.”
“That was nice of you,” Colleen said. “Did that make you feel good?”
“Uh-huh.” Chub speared a carrot.
“Good,” she said. “It’s important to do the right thing. Even when nobody else is.”
January 6 COLLEEN
Colleen watched Chub across the school gym, thumb-warring with Luke, waiting with the other kids to be picked up. Chub wore the checkered black and red hat she’d bought him for Christmas, earflaps hiding the sides of his face.
“He’s all Luke talks about.”
Colleen turned. Helen’s hands were red and chapped. She looked worn down, picking up extra shifts at the crab plant, since Carl had gotten laid off.
Escorted him off the premises, Eugene had bragged. Colleen had pictured Carl slowly getting to his feet in Merle’s office, as though the conversation had aged him fifty years.
“Chub too,” Colleen said, though this wasn’t exactly true. Colleen had pried things out of him, enough to know Luke had been punched in the stomach by an older boy, called a crybaby.
Eleanor Riggs flashed a quick smile at Colleen—Colleen had delivered her twins—but gave Helen a wide berth.
“Chub this, Chub that. I’m glad he has a friend,” Helen said, pretending to ignore the snub. She faced forward. To someone standing across the room, it wouldn’t even look like they were talking.
“Remember when Mrs. Walsh wanted to hold me back a year?” Helen asked.
“Because you wouldn’t talk in class.” Colleen nodded.
“I knew I wasn’t dumb, but still, it made me feel dumb. I remember Mrs. Bywater came to talk to my grandma about it. She said holding us back was just another way of holding us down. She made them give me that test, remember?”
Colleen nodded, recalling Helen’s triumphant grin, her own joy that her friend was coming with her to third grade.
“Carl thinks I’m mixing one thing up with another, but it feels the same,” Helen said. “Like someone’s trying to convince me something’s wrong with me. Like I don’t see what I see.”
Two teachers on duty chatted on the sidelines. A boy tugged a girl’s pigtail and before she even wailed in complaint, one snapped her fingers at him and pointed to the opposite wall, the offender shuffling toward the designated spot, coat trailing in defeat.
“They’ve all got eyes in the backs of their heads,” Helen said.
Sound reverberated under the high ceiling, which made it seem possible to eavesdrop on ten conversations at once, but Colleen couldn’t single any one out.
“That was smart, freezing those chicks,” Helen said.
Colleen had thought so too. Joanna must have walked out to the barn each morning, the dead still warm from the heat lamp.
“You have to wonder. If it can do that to a cow.”
“Her girls are healthy.”
Helen pressed her lips together. “I hope so.”
Colleen felt a flicker of irritation. Everybody staring, pretending not to, was throwing her off-kilter.
“How’s Carl?”
“You know how it is. When they’re used to working.”
“Pinned you!” Chub shrieked. Luke’s hair was buzzed, making his eyes look huge. He was smaller than Chub, fine boned, the kind of boy who ran fast as a matter of survival.
“Luke!” Helen called. Luke looked over and his face fell. Chub turned too, lighting up when he spotted Colleen.
“I’m hungry,” Luke said, dragging himself across the cafeteria.
“Your dad will make you a grilled cheese.”
“I want you to make it.”
“I have to go back to work tonight.”
He shuffled, sulking. Chub launched his lunch box into Colleen’s arms, trotting after Luke into the lobby, horsing around.
“Boys!” Gail Porter stood, hands on her hips.
Chub and Luke separated. Gail Porter locked eyes with Colleen.
“Better watch out, talking to me,” Helen said, pushing out into the drizzle.
Colleen hurried after her. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Helen unlocked her door and herded Luke in. “We did it to ourselves, right?”
“We were all there,” Colleen said. “It wasn’t just you.”
“They don’t know that.” Helen raised her chin at the meteor tails of eaten paint unfurled across the truck where eggs had hit. He didn’t hose them off in time, Rich would say, yet another indictment of Carl’s stupidity. Colleen had heard about her tires. What else had happened over the past three weeks for Helen to lock her truck in the school lot? Colleen searched for something more to say.
“Helen, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well. Sorry doesn’t pay the bills.” She slammed her door so hard Colleen’s ears rang.
January 10 RICH
Rich stood at the top of 24-7 Ridge, carving the roads with his eyes. Soggy ground sucked at his boots. The alder thicket he’d spent the morning falling was almost clear. Not bad for half a day’s work. Drop the big pumpkins just fine, once the alder was out of the way. He ripped the McCulloch’s cord—nothing. He tried again, hefted her—plenty of gas—dug out the spark plug. Insulator looked okay. He scraped crud off the electrodes, replaced the plug. Just cleaned the carburetor. Should purr like a cat. Damn ignition coil. Had to be.
Colleen was scrubbing the counters when he came in.
“Saw’s busted. Need anything from the store?”
“No.” She stopped, blew hair up out of her eyes. “Be careful.”
He stood for a moment outside the front door, smelling the weather. It was raining good by the time he got into the bends. He cracked the window, canted the blower. Grab a couple gallons of chain oil from Whitey, while he was at it, finally get his caulks back. He swung around the Last Chance curve and the windshield darkened. He slammed his brakes, skidded, truck tipping onto two wheels, landing with the squeak of an old hide-a-bed.
Jesus—his chest heaved—Christ.
He set the parking brake—serious business—and climbed up onto the back bumper for a better view. Mud had slid down over the road, sixty yards across, a couple of redwoods snapped in the mix. Hope nobody’s under it. No car horns, anyway.
Every year, the slides got worse. The more they logged, the less there was to hold the land in place. On the far side came a siren, then a wash of red pulsing through the mist. Harvey got out, climbed up onto the hood of his patrol car. Looked like a piss fir in that hat.
“You got flares?” Harvey yelled.
Rich set flares down the centerline, got back in his truck. His tires spun, spitting mud. He honked twice to Harvey. Driving back the way he’d come, it was hard to shake the feeling that any of these ridges might cave next.
Rich passed the house—he’d tell Colleen when he got back, no use worrying her now—hiss of wet road all the way to Eureka. Redwood Saw didn’t have shit.
“Nobod
y runs McCullochs anymore,” the kid at the counter said.
Nowhere left but J.P.’s.
Rich sat in the lot letting the truck go cold, took a deep breath, and went in. The place hadn’t changed. J.P. was dead, but somehow Rich still expected to find him here. J.P.’s son—the rat-faced one—sat behind the counter, flipping through a skin rag. Rich plunked down a replacement ignition coil. He’d wait on the chain oil. Not lining these pockets any more than he had to.
“Anything else?” the son asked, silver incisor catching the light.
“Nope.”
A phone rang. The son disappeared into the back. Rich took in the old guitars, eight-tracks, silver jubilee belt buckles and bolos. Guys used to pawn their saws at J.P.’s at the end of the season, hope they could afford to buy them back come spring. J.P. had done whatever Virgil asked—might have doctored Lark’s rope, clipped the steel threads, restitched the weave right here in this room.
The son came back.
“Five fifty.”
“Five dollars?”
“And fifty cents.”
Rich paid and went out. Dolores’s son stood waiting for him. He held out a hand and Rich shook it, let the man’s name slip through his fingers again, though he’d just said it.
“I was across the way.” The man lifted his chin in the direction of the mechanic’s.
“She quit on you?” Rich asked. VWs weren’t worth the tinfoil they were made from.
“Lost my brakes,” the man said. “Whoever cut them knew what he was doing.” He studied Rich. “I was hoping we’d get another chance to talk.”
“Why’s that?”
The guy jammed his hands into his front pockets. “I don’t want those sprays running off into the creeks. You don’t want your family drinking them.”
“So, Sanderson stops spraying, you’d be okay with us cutting every tree in that grove?”
The man dropped his eyes.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Hold on, now. I’m trying to say that we could be on the same side.”
Dolores had slunk out of town, pregnant by one of the radar boys, and returned a social worker; this was exactly the kind of self-righteous bastard she would raise.